I had a personal experience speaking in front of a class at Boca High. I walked away appalled by the degree to which the students were distracted by their cellphones. Only about 10% of the students had the ability to listen – maybe these were the kids with no phones.
Read this interesting story about cell phones in the classroom on Sun Sentinel.
If you send your children to school with cellphones, you probably expect that the teachers are equipped to make sure the phones don’t become a problem. I didn’t get that impression.
The impression that I did receive was that the students who did listen, and weren’t distracted by their phones, will be the leaders of their generation.
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Here’s an update that Tom Sawyer posted on Facebook today:
http://www.justicenewsflash.com/2011/07/27/boca-ration-high-school-under-fire-for-unconstitutional-cellphone-searches_201107278138.html
Cell phones should be allowed in school, but should not be used during classes as this is rude behavior when someone is lecturing. After all, would you sit in court and use a cellphone?
This lends itself to the next question: When is a PDA a cell phone? If a person is using a device capable of multiple uses how do we limit this to simple internet browsing as opposed to disruption.
The bottom line is that if people are considerate of each other this will work itself out.
Personally, I think all schools should be equipped with cell signal scramblers to make the entire school a “dead zone” – we got along fine without cell phones when we went to school. The “progress / technology” excuse does not work here, as not all “progress” is appropriate all the time.
If a student has an emergency, the first person they should be notifying is the school, not their parents. Their parents are not there to assist – the school is.
If a teacher has an emergency, there is a call button in the classroom to the front office, and it is usually a short walk/run to the office that the teacher, if incapacitated, could send a student.
…and then again, here is another article about an “appropriate” use of technology… had this student NOT snapped the picture, it would have been the substitute insisting they were not asleep over that of the student’s insistence they were…
http://www.koco.com/r/30302312/detail.html
Pic Of Sleeping Sub Nets Student Suspension
Mustang Parents Agree With Policy, Decry Disciplinary Action
POSTED: 10:57 pm CST January 25, 2012
UPDATED: 9:08 am CST January 26, 2012
MUSTANG, Okla. — A teacher’s nap in class ended up becoming a rude awakening for a student.
Mustang Public Schools officials said a ninth-grader snapped a photo of a snoozing substitute with a cellphone last Friday at Mustang Mid-High School.
The student was later suspended. The move is not sitting well with some parents.
“If anything, they should have been reprimanded for having a phone, but they probably took it to an extreme because they caught a teacher doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing,” parent Steven Graulich said.
District officials said they won’t discuss potential disciplinary action against any student or staff member.
However, officials said, “A student may possess a telecommunication device while on school premises, but the use of a telecommunication device is not permitted during the school day.”
Graulich said he agrees with the police but “maybe that was the only way to prove the teacher was sleeping. If the teacher was sleeping, then the school needs to investigate that.”
School officials said they “will take appropriate follow-up action as this type of behavior by staff is not tolerated.”